Abstract
Cognitive processes associated with locomotion have been hypothesized to automatically spatially update navigators' egocentric representations of objects in an environment. However, we have conducted a series of experiments that question the generality of this spatial updating hypothesis. We examined the effects of varying scene set-size on scene recognition RT and accuracy following locomotion. Across three experiments, observers viewed different scenes on each trial and made scene recognition judgments (i.e., identified which object in the scene had been moved) from the encoded view, after moving around the scene, from 36–180 degrees, or after the scene was rotated, from 36–180 degrees. The scenes consisted of 4, 6, 8, or 10 objects in Experiments 1 and 2 and of 4, 5, or 6 objects in Experiment 3. Across experiments, regardless of set-size and regardless of whether observers moved around the scene or whether the scene was rotated, RT increased and accuracy decreased with angular distance between encoded and judged views. Thus, the data show that locomotion impaired scene recognition. Furthermore, observers were generally faster and more accurate at judging smaller scenes, but with the exception of the 10-object scenes, the linear relationships between RT and angular distance and between accuracy and angular distance did not vary with scene set-size. Thus, the performance advantage with smaller set-sizes was not due to locomotion facilitating the transformation of smaller versus larger scenes. Together, these data in comparison with data from other studies raise questions about when locomotion leads to automatically updated representations of scenes.